Way of Kings in popular media

[Galladon he/him]

I don't want to offend but in this instance I feel there is no way around it. Anime for basically any epic war fantasy is ridiculous. Anime is many things but never subtle be it the blatent sexuality, the over expressed emotions, overly dramatic plotdevices.

 

Just imagine shallan, in a skimpy dress with DDs, blushing when she watches Kal go through a kata- I don't want to see that, besides a drawn army can simply not be awe inspiring - it's DRAWN. Just think about V for Vendetta.

 

 

Game of thrones on the other hand seems to be made for that, a lot of politics, loads of "getting a load off" (pardon that cheap punn), and this kind of stuff, there doesn't need to be that awe-factor. And it IS overly dramatic and blatently sexual

[Natans he/him]

I don't want to offend but in this instance I feel there is no way around it. Anime for basically any epic war fantasy is ridiculous. Anime is many things but never subtle be it the blatent sexuality, the over expressed emotions, overly dramatic plotdevices.

 

Just imagine shallan, in a skimpy dress with DDs, blushing when she watches Kal go through a kata- I don't want to see that, besides a drawn army can simply not be awe inspiring - it's DRAWN. Just think about V for Vendetta.

 

 

Game of thrones on the other hand seems to be made for that, a lot of politics, loads of "getting a load off" (pardon that cheap punn), and this kind of stuff, there doesn't need to be that awe-factor. And it IS overly dramatic and blatently sexual

 

Well, there is plenty of what you say in many animes but, not all animes are so "over the top". Cowboy Bebop is a classic exemple.There is Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and many other that are more "realistic".

[name_here]

I don't want to offend but in this instance I feel there is no way around it. Anime for basically any epic war fantasy is ridiculous. Anime is many things but never subtle be it the blatent sexuality, the over expressed emotions, overly dramatic plotdevices.

 

Just imagine shallan, in a skimpy dress with DDs, blushing when she watches Kal go through a kata- I don't want to see that, besides a drawn army can simply not be awe inspiring - it's DRAWN. Just think about V for Vendetta.

 

That is simply not universally true. Behold, a fight scene from a rather popular anime containing two female characters who are quite well-dressed, have entirely reasonable body types, and do not over-express emotions. I will grant that it was a rather dramatic plot device and the guy present did express a great deal of emotion, but he was under rather a lot of stress at the time.

 

It's also a pretty good example of the sort of scene that makes the pro-anime crowd think it'd be a perfect fit for much of the Cosmere. One of the problems with adapting high fantasy and the like to live action is special effects. You might say that there are plenty of great movies and TV shows that don't use much in the way of special effects, but the thing with those is that the scripts do not call for very many effects. An adaption of The Way of Kings would demand CGI plants and creatures and Stormlight in basically every scene, and preferably not terrible ones. Likewise, the fight scenes have a lot going on in them. Now, there are a bunch of huge blockbusters that have very large quantities of good special effects, but they have rather huge budgets as well. Doing it for a TV show is simply not happening. Anime, however, has no such problem.

 

I will grant that an adaptation of TWoK would call for a more subdued than average tone, at least most of the time, but it's certainly not outside of the bounds of what the medium can do.

[Fistsofrage]

I can see Kaladin's leap from the bridge into the midst of the parshendi happening as a movie scene. It'd be epic. And the scene where he kills the shardbearer too. Seems like Brandon wrote this book with a movie in mind xD

[Argent he/him]

I can see Kaladin's leap from the bridge into the midst of the parshendi happening as a movie scene. It'd be epic. And the scene where he kills the shardbearer too. Seems like Brandon wrote this book with a movie in mind xD

 

You are correct, in a way. Brandon writes with the visual imagery in mind - when he wants to put together a scene that looks cool, he makes it look cool. Literally every Brandon avalanche (man, I never see this term used these days...) is a cinematic marvel, but things don't stop there - many of the scenes before and after would look epic on a screen. It's just how he writes. Robert Jordan, for example, is not as concerned with this - in fact, one of Brandon's recent  Wheel of Time blogs talks about the differences in styles between the two of them, battle scenes in particular. Jordan aims for accuracy. Brandon is willing to sacrifice some of that accuracy for the sake of showmanship. 

[Iredomi]

Well, there is plenty of what you say in many animes but, not all animes are so "over the top". Cowboy Bebop is a classic exemple.There is Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and many other that are more "realistic".

I definitely would not want to see it made into a Shounen but something more along the lines of Seinen like these anime you mention. Man... If Ufotable produced a Mistborn or SA anime with less stylisation on characters I would be so behind that.

 

Edit: got type moon confused with Ufotable... silly me.

Edited November 8, 2013 by Iredomi

[Galladon he/him]

That is simply not universally true. Behold, a fight scene from a rather popular anime containing two female characters who are quite well-dressed, have entirely reasonable body types, and do not over-express emotions. I will grant that it was a rather dramatic plot device and the guy present did express a great deal of emotion, but he was under rather a lot of stress at the time.

 

watched it and it made my point for me: Astonishment in the first scene: who actually ghasps and widens their eyes??? thats soap opera level acting, it IS a cultural thing Japan is allmost allways over the top and that is something that can not be taken as serious as TWoK deserves.

 

This needs to be made good with fitting actors, good special effects or not at all. Just look at eragon-granted not a very good book in the first place but as a 14 yo boy I quiet enjoyed it - the move destroyed the whole thing; Lord of the rings and Game of Thrones actually improved the books (blocking out most of Frodos bitching and whining). 

 

But I quess all of that is just a matter of taste.

[Inkthinker]

Need a multiple choice poll.

 

Anyhow, as an animator, I would push for an animated adaptation.

 

I would also push for a video game, but an animated adaptation seems better suited to Stormlight.

 

I would argue that Stormlight makes the better anime, and Mistborn the better game.

[Inkthinker]

I don't want to offend but in this instance I feel there is no way around it. Anime for basically any epic war fantasy is ridiculous. Anime is many things but never subtle be it the blatent sexuality, the over expressed emotions, overly dramatic plotdevices.

 

Just imagine shallan, in a skimpy dress with DDs, blushing when she watches Kal go through a kata- I don't want to see that, besides a drawn army can simply not be awe inspiring - it's DRAWN. Just think about V for Vendetta.

 

Nothing you're describing is inherent to the media itself. Stormlight would be as well-designed and directed as it has the potential to be. There's no need nor any interest in modifying character designs to make them hypersexualized (and I think I can speak for the team that we wouldn't support any such attempt).

 

Stormlight would not work as a television show because the costs of sets and costumes would be astronomical (or it would look half-assed. You really want Shardplate to look like clanky Renn Faire armor with LED's under the edges?). Game of Thrones is great, but it's suited to the format in ways that Stormlight is not, and Westeros asks much less of the fantastic than the world of Roshar.

 

It doesn't work as a film because the overarching plots and themes explored so far are not well-suited to a 120-minute script. A completely new story would be necessary, and there's no way to explore the breadth of the world and it's many aspects within the time-frame... we'd have to give up a lot.

 

It could work as a game, provided the right people were developing and the right scope were defined, but it would be difficult to include every aspect of the magic systems into a well-balanced playable engine. Not to mention the endless argument over what type of game it should be. MMO? 3rd-person adventure? Battlefield action? Much like a film, we couldn't cover everything and we would have to give up something. That being said, I'd like to see ChAIR work with the license.

 

As an animated series, it can look as fantastic as described in the text, last as long as the story needs it to, and encompass every aspect of the world. There's no place you couldn't go, no scene that could not be envisioned. In terms of budget, the cost for deveopment is significantly lessened, and the content has precedent for success with the consumer.

 

It's the logical, obvious choice.

Edited November 8, 2013 by Inkthinker

[Sasukerinnegan he/him]

thnxs for the support, Inkthinker........ I also proposed the anime format because of the same reasons. 1 upvote to u.

[The Rangress]

 

Mr Peter thnxs for the support.

 

I'd like to ask you, would it be possible to actually convert TWoK into an anime? Although Japanese light novels and visual novels are often converted into anime, I've never actually heard of a Western novel being converted into an anime. X men did become an anime but that's a comic. 

 

In fact, I remember that Mr Brandon was once asked if he would consider converting Mistborn into an anime. At the time, he replied that he'd like to but that he had no idea how to go about doing it.

 

The Deltora series, written by an Australian, was converted into an anime.

[Fistsofrage]

I guess it's a matter of opinion. I don't watch much anime anymore, I just read the manga. Naruto fillers and some the things in one piece and other manga based animes sort of dampened my enthusiasm. Animes can be done well and enjoyed, but there are a lot of people would love to see Brad Pitt or some other actor wielding a spear or acting as Dalinar. The descriptions of the bridgeman outfits and Kaladin's battle formations make it seem like this could be "300" all over again.

[Galladon he/him]

Well I can see that, it would be quiet cost effective to animate it, but again there are fundamental differences between books and anime.

Figures:

E.g. I allways pictured Kal and Dalinar as real men and with that I mean "eating rusty screwes for breakfast- men" , and thats just something that isn't possible in anime (the fundamental style disallows that, or at least not to the extend I'd want).

Landscape:

Awe inspiering landscape in anime- no I'm sorry but that's just not possible (although if michael whelan drew those as he did the cover I'd have to concede this point - but then again it's not anime). The advantage you have in anime regarding this is best reflected in movies Howl' moving castle: the colourfulness and the bright highlights, etc.

. Roshar (or I should say the predominent regions at this point) is mostly drab, the plants are undestinct form the rest of the landscape, you can't achieve the real effect, since you would need high resolution (never been a part of anime).

Effects:

It would quiet possibly be the same effects used in other anime- you know what i mean lightning, aura, etc.:

Eg: Kal's glowing, I allways imagined it as if his flesh was glowing but the skin was layerd ontop of the glow. In anime there can never be finess like that.

Those are just some of the things I would expect an why I think anime is not the fitting media.

Anime is great for the colorful, bizzare and one on one fight scenes with loads of inner monologue and smack-talk, but I disagree that it fits here.

Edited November 9, 2013 by Galladon

[Gloom he/him]

I don't know, if you mix some of Peter Jacksons techniques he use in the Hobbit with CGI like the Spirits Within, you might be able to pull off something interesting. It would obviously be a long flick, but it could work with the right production company. I'm still pretty skeptical, but I'd give it a chance.

[Unknowingly he/him]

A tv series would work best but we have to wait.

We need to wait for the technology to get so good that to do the CGI effects it won't cost nearly as much as it does today. I'd say we would have to wait 20-30 years for this reason and so that brandons fandom can grow exponentially so that there is enough support. I admit the costumes and otger things are still a cost problem but if the following and demand are big enough (and I believe it will be) then a studio will find it worth the tine and effort to make this adaption.

[Gamma Fiend he/him]

A full open World like Skyrim with a character with Windrunning powers would be wonderful. Bethesda could create the world of Roshar no problem. I think individually making all those spren and putting all those cool plants everywhere would be more fun than flowers and just random items.

Having to take shelter from the highstorms, hunting chasmfiends on the Shattered Plains. It would be so beautiful.

[name_here]

What I worry about with video game adaptions of any Cosmere works is the interface. The magic systems are all complicated and fast, and mostly rather free-form. To properly reproduce the feel of Lashings, for instance, basically everything would need to be a physics object, the player would need to be able to set a Lashing strength from .5 to large and a target point, and this would need to be seamless enough to Lash several items in less than a second.

 

The actual mechanics would be pretty much trivial, although storing everything in an area would eat up memory and probably require sticking in a bunch of loading barriers in particularly large and cluttered buildings, but I don't know how you would even begin designing the control scheme. Mistborn has a similar problem, although since the physicals only work in straight lines it's more manageable.

[Iredomi]

Well I can see that, it would be quiet cost effective to animate it, but again there are fundamental differences between books and anime.

Figures:

E.g. I allways pictured Kal and Dalinar as real men and with that I mean "eating rusty screwes for breakfast- men" , and thats just something that isn't possible in anime (the fundamental style disallows that, or at least not to the extend I'd want).

Landscape:

Awe inspiering landscape in anime- no I'm sorry but that's just not possible (although if michael whelan drew those as he did the cover I'd have to concede this point - but then again it's not anime). The advantage you have in anime regarding this is best reflected in movies Howl' moving castle: the colourfulness and the bright highlights, etc.

. Roshar (or I should say the predominent regions at this point) is mostly drab, the plants are undestinct form the rest of the landscape, you can't achieve the real effect, since you would need high rethe gritty(never been a part of anime).

Effects:

It would quiet possibly be the same effects used in other anime- you know what i mean lightning, aura, etc.:

Eg: Kal's glowing, I allways imagined it as if his flesh was glowing but the skin was layerd ontop of the glow. In anime there can never be finess like that.

Those are just some of the things I would expect an why I think anime is not the fitting media.

Anime is great for the colorful, bizzare and one on one fight scenes with loads of inner monologue and smack-talk, but I disagree that it fits here.

I think and I mean no offense that maybe anime probably isn't the right word to be used as you're clearly very hung up on things in anime that are definitely not intrinsic to it. Yes you are absolutely spot on with what you are saying for a majority of anime. But if SA were to be produced as an anime Mr. Sanderson who has shown involvement in past nonbook projects (the mistborn rpg ) would definitely want to produce something atypical without a lot of the quirks anime carries around with it. Of course you are more than entitled to your opinion and I would agree with you completely if the case was SA being completely handed over to a Japanese studio without any input by Team Sanderson.

In regards to your statement on anime not being able to create manly men I really don't understand that at all so would you please elaborate?

As for landscape what you were saying about having Whelan's backgrounds is something that could be done very eeasily. In some of the more costly anime today the backgrounds are pretty much matte paintings with the surroundings something close to CGI like in Fate/zero. Now its nothing close to avatar animation but i feel like that film was already too expensive to justify. The line drawings are something that seems to almost exclusively belong to characters.

Of course ideally SA would be best as a live action TV series with an Avatar sized budget and though this would be amazingly awesome it just cannot be a reality well for now at least.

Otherwise I do agree with your points on Kaladin's skin glowing that would indeed be tough to manage in an anime, but the medium has come a long way since Dragonball Z so maybe it wouldn't be as bad as you think.

But then again you are giving what you would ideally want for SA in popular media so who am I to say that you're wrong because you're not, it's just that your perception of anime seems a bit narrow though not incorrect and I just wanted to open your view of anime up a bit. Of course you can still dislike the idea of an SA anime but yeah I think anyone's ideas being challenged in a sensible and considerate way can only promote growth and if I have offended you I am sincerely apologetic.

[Galladon he/him]

Maybe you are right, if team sanderson actually controlls the studios hand quiet strictly in matters of plot etc..

 

If you say that landscape can be as beautiful and detailed then I'm willing to concede this too, though I have never seen it beeing done in the detail required since most anime is mostly dialogue and action based. But if the scenes are actually made in the detail that is needed...

 

Manly man: . Well something in comic or anime style never looks as if it's gonna put bamboo shoots under your fingernails, and this problem is especially big in anime which is why they often tend to overstylize the characters (muscles, scars, etc), I mean imagine in  anime style: Bruce Willis lighting a plane on fire and saying: "yippeekayay....", just doesn't compare.

 

 

My conclusion: If you have a creativ anime production team that doesn't just want to make another cheap unimaginative production, but is aware how delicate the world of roshar is and how much attention it deserves and is willing to give great thought to the visualization of the magic system, then you really have something. This of course requires the direct supervision of the plot and dialogues (there can NOT be those typical hour long dialogues within a fight). Oh and most important it seriously needs to be dubbed, I don't think anyone can take Kal seriously whilst talking in a Japanese-boyish voice.

 

If this is met I'd love to watch it, but I'd hate to see a butchery made out of this. I guess that's also the reason why this topic is so hottly discussed, nobody wants this masterpiece to be blemished. 

I know that it's virtually impossible that SA will be produced on TV with the budget that would do it justice...

 

P.S. No offence was taken, I just really love a nice heated discussion- how else am I gonna know if the point where I'm standing is even valid (sorry if I come on too strongly with my point of view)

[jcoop513 he/him]

Anime would be a perfect (well, best choice among options) medium for this, but I do agree that the dub could be a potentially major problem that I hadn't considered.  The other issues I'm not too concerned with -- landscape & scenery, the magic system visualization, bad-chull characters, etc.  I can imaging some impressive scenes on Roshar in an anime format based on the wide range of anime I've seen thus far, but now when I think about the English dubbing I cringe.

 

Personally, I've pretty much had to ban watching any English dub after torturing myself several times watching shows playing in the US.  Even voice actors that are awesome and sound like real people still try to mimic the mouths of the characters when on camera, screwing up the timing (rushing to get the words out, bad pauses, etc) and likely altering the original language script to something almost completely different and perhaps less powerful/humorous/etc.

 

If SLA is adapted into an anime and dubbed in English, the animation on the characters would need to be done based on English dialog and timing.  Even then, the voice actors would need to be real professionals, rather than the Saturday morning cartoon voices that sound like people deliberately altering their voices to speak to babies or small dogs (which a large majority, but not all, of English-dubbed anime characters sound like).

 

In any case, I agree the anime adaptation couldn't be something just handed over to an existing Japanese anime production company.  In addition to the special care needed for the visuals, the dialog and dubbing would indeed need a lot of attention.

[name_here]

Yeah, ideally the voicework would be English to begin with. Some dubs are pretty good, but they're more the exception. Mind, I think that's more a matter of money and interest than inherent difficulty, and an English original with the voice budget of a typical dub would be pretty bad too.

[Bloodfalcon he/him]

What I worry about with video game adaptions of any Cosmere works is the interface. The magic systems are all complicated and fast, and mostly rather free-form. To properly reproduce the feel of Lashings, for instance, basically everything would need to be a physics object, the player would need to be able to set a Lashing strength from .5 to large and a target point, and this would need to be seamless enough to Lash several items in less than a second.

 

The actual mechanics would be pretty much trivial, although storing everything in an area would eat up memory and probably require sticking in a bunch of loading barriers in particularly large and cluttered buildings, but I don't know how you would even begin designing the control scheme. Mistborn has a similar problem, although since the physicals only work in straight lines it's more manageable.

I can visualize the lashing controls fairly easily for a computer game. Click a wall or object, press 1, 2, or 3 to choose a lashing. You could do a Hold to Charge for magnitude or just rapid click like it seems Szeth does to pile on lashings. There may be a significant learning curve for handling all of those gravitational laws, but I don't think it would be a deal breaker by any means. It could also feel very much like a Star Wars Force Unleashed + Portal type of deal. 

[Inkthinker]

Man, there's nothing inherent about anything in "anime". It's another word for ANIMATED. No one style, no single look. The same tools that make Naruto also make Scooby Doo. Sometimes it's the same people.

 

Stormlight would work best as a full-season animated series. It's the most cost-effective (which is hugely important if we're having a real discussion and not just daydreaming) media that's fully capable of depicting all the magic and wonders of the series. Trust the design team to handle the designs, it would not look like Pokemon.

 

Sheesh. Obviously it would look like Beyblade. Duh.

[Gloom he/him]

It would still be nice it it was picked up by a movie channel like HBO partnered with a reputable animation studio. Brandon is generally pretty PG on content, but I'd like to see something a little more gritty than Clone Wars.

[Arondell]

Man, there's nothing inherent about anything in "anime". It's another word for ANIMATED. No one style, no single look. The same tools that make Naruto also make Scooby Doo. Sometimes it's the same people.

 

 

That is a point that has been debated among fans actually.  There is a large group of fans of Japanese animation that point out that when they speak of anime they are specifically talking about animation from Japan.  I tend to side with that group my self most of the time since well...face it if some one says they are an anime fan you don't think about Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Bugs Bunny and old Tex Avery shows.  You tend to think about stuff more like Pokemon, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and My Neighbor Totoro.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Arondell